When he limped out he didn’t say a word. End of the Folsom service. But if there is anything that makes me uneasy, it’s a coward who doesn’t talk.
Chapter 10
I swarmed after that, all over the neighborhood, trying to spread trust and cheer. Folsom was gone, Benotti didn’t show, and the fever, so to speak, was going out of the thing. I ran into Lippit after a while who was in a high fine humor, and even the cop appointment for the afternoon didn’t worry him. He was, after all, running a legitimate business, and if the police wished to keep an eye on the neighborhood, that was so much for the better. Benotti would be the troublemaker, not he, and as for the Folsom menace, good riddance.
“I am happy,” he said, “about everything.”
“I’m tired.”
“And that little eight o’clock raid in the morning,” he said, “masterful.”
I had mixed feelings about that in particular and felt that the whole thing had been much too frantic to be called masterful.
“Like a well-planted leak,” said Lippit. “Made Benotti pull back all over.”
“I would like to go home and get some sleep, Walter.”
“Calls for a party,” he said. “Last one was a dud anyway.”
Then he said I looked like hell and why didn’t I go home and get some sleep.
“You’ll see the captain in the afternoon?”
“I’ll speak to the captain,” he said.
“You’ll keep an eye out for Folsom, next twenty-four hours?”
“Don’t worry. It’s my union.”
“You’ll keep checking Benotti doesn’t wake up all of a sudden?”
“Christ, you’re nervous,” and he told me to beat it “But show at ten this evening,” he said. “Little party.”
“I’m not wearing a tux again.”
“Beat it,” and I did.
What kept me from feeling as untroubled as Lippit was the fact that I knew more than Lippit.
Or course there had been a leak. Except there had been a leak before the little eight-in-the-morning affair.
I drove a ways toward home, then stopped at a drug store. I phoned Blue Beat Recording and asked for Conrad. He took a while and I wondered why I hadn’t called from home, from my bed. At least I could have been lying down.
“Blue Beat Recording,” he said.
“I know. This is Jack.”
“I know.”
“You got the mixer, Conrad?”
“Yes. This morning. But who were those guys. Jeeze, what guys!”
“Reason I’m calling, Conrad, to let you know there wasn’t a soul at that Benotti place this morning. Not a soul, you understand.”
“I understand.”
“I thought you would. What all did you tell Frank, when you called him?”
“I just tried to tell him to get our mixer out of there, but you know how it is, he wanted to know why, and how come this call at four in the morning and…”
“You mean he wasn’t a, l, o, n, e, either?”
“What was that?”
“Never mind. What did you tell him?”
“Well, you know. Just a hint, and that I couldn’t tell him more.”
“Must have been a fat hint. Obese, even.”
“Anyway, we got the machine. What else is there?”
“Nothing, I hope. Like, for instance, in that hintful conversation you had, you didn’t just happen to drop my name, did you?”
“Of course not, Jack. You sound tired, Jack, you know that?”
“Yes. I know that. I just called to be sure I can sleep well.”
“Go ahead.”
I said good-bye and was about to hang up when he said to hold on a minute, one more thing.
“Speaking of names, there was somebody wanted to know your name.”
“What’s this, what’s this?”
“You sound tired, Jack. All I…”
“I know I’m tired but I don’t know what you’re talking about. What was all this?”
“I said: Speaking of names-like when you asked me did I tell him your name-”
“The point, Conrad. Please.”
“Somebody called up to ask what your name was. This girl.”
“ What girl?”
“There’s this girl works at Hough and Daly, this little one-I mean not so little, if you know what I mean, but short-anyway, you know whom I mean?”
“Yes, Conrad, I know whom you mean. This girl works at Hough and Daly, this little one. What else?”
“She said, what about this guy who came in the morning to pick up that mixer, this guy-and she kind of described you-very friendly description…”
“I want to go to bed, Conrad.”
“And she says this guy says he’s an agent and talent promoter and if it was true.”
“And then you said, Conrad? What did you say, Conrad?”
‘“No,’ I said. ‘No.’”
“Ohmyeverlovingsaintedname.”
“What?”
“That’s all there was to the conversation?”
“Then she said, ‘Well, of all the-.’Just like that. Well, of all the, and then she hung up.”
I exhaled a long malediction and then hung up, too. Now she figured I had been lying. Now she might wonder who I was. She might wonder enough to ask Franky, maybe, the guy who had worked on the mixer, or just enough to talk about it in general: the queer thing that had happened to her in the morning when this guy came over and pretended he was somebody else, and how come at the same time the Benotti shop got messed up while this no- good pretender took her out for coffee.
By far the neatest thing would be if she thought that I was a talent promoter. I would have liked that best. I know she would have.
The Hough and Daly ramp was busy this time of the afternoon. I pulled my car up to the platform, got an argument from a foreman, said something to him which I don’t remember, because the foremost thing in my mind was get in and get out and get a few hours’ sleep.
I looked through the window into the office and she was there doing work on an adding machine. She had a piece of a doughnut in her mouth and a coffee cup in one hand. With the other one she was working the machine. Very busy. She never looked up. There was a fan over her desk which made her short hair jump and flutter and which flattened her blouse up against her front. But flat isn’t really the word.
She looked up, saw me, and bit into her doughnut. Then she got up and came to the window.
“Well, of all the!” she said.
I said, “Hello, honey,” and smiled a warm, tired smile, only half of which was a fake.
“Don’t you honey me, you-you promoter.”
“But I don’t know your name. I came back because I didn’t have a chance to ask you this morning.”
“A lot of strange things going on here this morning,” she said.
